The wind is howling outside my office window today, At least most of the snow is gone, but the clouds are low on the horizon and everything is gray and gloomy. I am excited about the possibilities of spring gardening because we have several projects planned for this year. We did accomplish a lot of yard and garden updates last year, but it is never quite as much as I would like. I guess that’s the perfectionist coming out, or the OCD or something . . . . but I really just want to get things to a place where we can mow the lawn and water the garden and then enjoy our yard in the spring and summer. Is that too optimistic? I’m getting ready to go so that when the weather begins to warm up we’ll be all set to start those projects. For this week’s Home Matters Linky Party #166, I found a few rather practical and pretty ideas that will suit out yard and garden perfectly. #Gardening #SpringGarden #HomeMattersParty

We have a really big deck with a gazebo, so it has a lot of potential. We are hoping to refinish the deck surface this year as it is quite weather-worn and looking quite shabby. Not “shabby chic” either. It needs to be completely replaced or at least resurfaced with the paint that is like a latex finish. We’ll see what we can afford, but we really must do something this year. I want to paint the gazebo and the deck railing white, and we already have several of these fun galvanized planters. They look really pretty with just the greenery or with some sweet white blooms in them. This is one idea that we can definitely do inexpensively to spiff up our deck.

Most of the pictures of gardening and landscaping that I came across are definitely not the kind of house we live in! Our house isn’t a mansion, we don’t have a pool or a seaside view, and we don’t have a lakefront cottage. Our house is an ordinary ranch style house, built in the 60s, with a lot of room and a pretty big yard, but it isn’t fancy. We do have a lovely deck (well, it will be lovely this year after we refinish and paint it), and the house had quite a bit of professional landscaping that was put in by the previous owners. But all of that was rather overgrown and really messy and out of control. We’ve managed to tame most of the “jungle” bits of the yard, painted the storage shed a pretty blue where my husband keeps the snow blower and the lawn mower. The lawn is quite nice and we keep it mowed so it always looks neat and tidy . . . . but our little corner of the neighborhood is not a mansion.

So when I saw the picture above, I realized that the grouping of shrubs, hostas, and white ground cover would work in our yard. Even without the mansion. I love having a perennial garden and have been adding to ours a bit every year, so this is great inspiration to keep on creating this kind of simple but beautiful garden around our kitchen door.

I’ve had an herb garden for many years, and I have found that it is really a lot of fun to experiment with different herbs. They smell nice in the garden, you can cut them to cook with, and some of them even have pretty blooms. Several years ago I would enter a “bouquet” of my herbs in the local 4H fair and every year I would win a blue ribbon. That’s because at that time, I was the only person in our little town that grew an herb garden! Here’s a simple and pretty way to create a “layered” herb garden in containers. It looks really nice with the various shades of green in the bright white pots. I think I just might try it this way!

Concrete Edger Blocks

All around your house there are these concrete edger blocks. I actually don’t like the way they look right now and I’ve been trying to figure out what do do with them. When I saw this picture, however, I thought that perhaps I could “rescue” the blocks we already have and maybe make them look pretty again. With the soft greenery tumbling over the edger blocks, they actually look rather nice, don’t you think? I just might have to rethink my original plan of trying to replace them all. That would take a lot of time, energy, and money, to say nothing of figuring out what to do with the old blocks.

Painted Terra Cotta Planter Pots

Last year I had a lot of fun painting a few of these terra cotta planter pots in red, pink, green, and white to look like watermelons. They were so cute on the steps outside our kitchen door with red and white impatiens and some trailing vines. I think I’ll paint a few more this year! Here’s a super simple idea for painting a flower pot . . . .but you could paint yours any design or color you want. I’m not sure I would go with the gold and white, as our house is a very light gray with white trim and red shutters. We painted both of our front doors turquoise last autumn which looks really pretty with the red shutters. Well, those shutters need to be touched up this spring, too, but the turquoise really does look nice with the bright white trim. So I might paint a few more pots in some combination of turquoise, white, and red. Then I’ll put in a few more red and white impatiens and that will really be pretty wherever we put them, on the deck or on the porch.

Lots of rather simple and inexpensive ideas to get you thinking about spring gardening. I hope you are inspired to begin planning for your spring yard and garden projects. And I also hope you will join us this week for the Home Matters Linky Party. See you there.

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